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Tag: holidays

Last night I was at a film group meeting at the Jewish Community Center in Tucson, and as it was the third night of Chanukah (Hanukkah) there were cookies and gelt after the event. It was nice. I brought a couple each back home for the girls. It reminded me to wish everyone Happy Holidays whatever you are celebrating this month. Here at our house, we are observing the usual Xmas celebrations with a fake Yule tree and lots of super hero and Star Wars ornaments. There are some Pagan and Buddhist elements also because we are non denominational like that. So the Solstice will be celebrated, but in a very open minded way.

The meeting itself was actually a networking event, which was fun but still involved speaking to people in a group setting. This is not my best event in the Human Olympics. It went as well as it could have I suppose. There are a couple of projects I’ll be looking for collaborators for in 2019, and it was a good first step.

On the writing front, two short film scripts I wrote this year are about to be evaluated by a consultant who judges for a major film festival, nearly two dozen poems are out on submission and a collection’s worth will be on their way to an editor after one last proofreading pass. The novel is nearly ready for its deep dive into the icy waters of the publishing world. Its BatDad is very proud.

At the halfway mark this month, we have a birthday, and then another teenager to deal with. After that is the Hallmark Xmas event, then the Generic Whitebread New Years. I’m almost done shopping. I think. Once into 2019, there is an anniversary, the real New Year (Chinese New Year!) and the last family birthday for a while. Then there will be few events aside from the projects I’m working on until the next Holidaze cycle.

I wish everyone the happiest of holiday seasons, and a very happy New Year! I’ll see you on the other side, hopefully with more frequent updates. MTFBWY.

There. Now that I have formally declared War on Christmas, we can proceed.

This time of year is very nearly non stop holidays for me. Birthday, Thanksgiving, another Birthday, Christmas then New Years Day all within ten to twenty days of each other. There will be a brief respite in January before the anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and then another Birthday come around in February. So I’m a little distracted.

There are a little more than a dozen scenes left to write in my current work in progress. Most of those will be short late breaking news style developments as it rolls towards the conflagration at the end. The final chapter I’ve had in mind since the story idea first hit me. I remarked at some point on Twitter, that if I had any plot holes in the WIP, I could fill them with bullets, and it would work, because it’s noir! But I believe every question gets answered by the end. I am hopeful that it may be finished by the end of the year, but I don’t do deadlines. I mostly do touchy-feely “is this right for the story?” style check-ins with my muses. Crazy, I know.

Some more of my poems will be published this spring. When that magazine comes out, I’ll have more details. Other poems are out on submission and we’ll see what happens with those. With response times being what they are, I might not know until mid 2018. It is a goal of mine to have the collection submitted next year. There are a few presses I’ve looked into so far, but no decision has been made on that just yet. That too, will lead to more waiting. Everything always takes longer than I expect. Just the way it goes.

One fun thing we were able to do during this Holidaze season, was right after my favorite holiday (Halloween) we got to go to Tucson Comic Con, and it was on the same weekend as the Day of the Dead. So…comics and getting to see the All Souls Procession for the first time! It was the perfect weekend.

I love everything about ComicCon. The comics, the people who like them, the awesome artist’s booths that are always there, the cosplayers, you name it. The celebrity guests are cool too. This year I actually did a photo op for the first time, because it was Gates McFadden! of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In previous years, I’ve attended signings by some of my favorites like Ray Park and Nichelle Nichols, but had never taken part in one of the photo ops. So that was a bit of a different experience. She’s a nice lady. It was a much more brief interaction than the signings, once they verify that the image the photographer has taken is good, they have to move on to the next person in line. When I met Ray Park at the El Paso SciFiCon signing, we had time to chat about martial arts while he was signing my Snake Eyes print. While we were talking, I asked him about the Sleepy Hollow promotional posters he had at his table, and confessed that I had no idea he was in it. He confirmed that he was the Headless Horseman for the fight scenes, and signed one of those for me as well! Which was awesome and unexpected. He’s just a really nice guy. I mention this for a couple of reasons: one, I have been very fortunate in all the interactions I have had as a fan with actors, rock stars, and athletes. All of them have been very kind and approachable. Also, the other personal highlight of this comic con for me, related to fight scenes as well.

Just like that earlier convention, when I randomly one day picked up a copy of What’s Up magazine at a convenience store a few days before the event and the wind blew it open to the page where the first words I read were El Paso SciFi Convention, and the second thing I saw was the name Ray Park. Naturally, my first thought was Ray Park!? I. Am. There. The Force was with me. It knew I’d want to meet Ray, so it made sure that happened. I had the same feeling of serendipity when I saw this on the Tucson ComicCon schedule: The Fundamentals of Fight Scenes.

If I had come for no other reason, it would have been perfect timing. That other project that I have sometimes mentioned in passing, will involve a lot of fight scenes. While I have (albeit around twenty years ago) taken acting classes, and even an acting for TV and Film class specifically, and I’ve been involved in numerous martial arts demonstrations over the years, both in Kung Fu and Capoeira–I had never actually worked on a choreographed fight sequence for stage or film. Sure, back when I was studying and teaching martial arts actively, we goofed off and recreated some of our favorite Kung Fu movie moments, or made up new ones to entertain ourselves–but that was just for fun.

As that workshop showed me, (it was much more of a workshop, than a panel) staging that kind of choreography to entertain other people–whether that is from the camera’s perspective, or that of where a live audience will be–is very different. There are distances and angles at which our depth perception fails us, and we will totally believe what we are seeing from our perspective. There is an art to it that is just as intricate and challenging as full contact sparring, but the distancing and timing are very different for obvious reasons. This panel answered some of the questions I was planning on asking some of my old Kung Fu and Wushu teachers about, and gave me a very good idea of how I need to be working on things as I develop this project.

After all that, the awesome comics I got (including some Snake Eyes, the Falcon mini series, a cool issue of Marvel team up with the Sons of the Tiger, and the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #19 featuring the very first appearance of the original White Tiger!), we walked down to see the All Souls Procession which was quite an experience. Even with the sullen teen and angsty tween pestering us to just go home already.

So…that was Nov. 3-5th. Meant to write about it earlier, but stuff keeps happening. Now I’m shopping for things for two weeks from now and two weeks after that, and then a month and a half after that. Oh, and everything else I have to do. If you don’t hear from me til oh…somewhere around February 27th or so, it’s the holidaze.